Stories

Beaming Clean Energy from Space

Once considered science fiction, technology capable of collecting solar power in space and beaming it to Earth to provide a global supply of clean and affordable energy is moving closer to reality. Through...

Test Your Knowledge About Automated Automobiles

See how much you know about automated automobiles with this quiz.

An Automatic Drawing Machine for Metamaterials

The drawing machine uses pens with ink containing conductive material or regular mechanical pencils with varying graphite content.

Gripper Robot Can Grasp Objects from Very Fine to Large

The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) announced that it has developed a gripper capable of all gripping movements, inspired by elephant trunks. It mimics how elephants...

Tentacle Robot Can Gently Grasp Fragile Objects

If you’ve ever played the claw game at an arcade, you know how hard it is to grab and hold onto objects using robotic grippers. Imagine how much more nerve-wracking that game would be if,...

The Burrowing Mole Crab Robot

The unassuming Pacific mole crab, Emerita analoga, is about to make some waves. UC Berkeley researchers have debuted a unique robot inspired by this burrowing crustacean that may someday help evaluate the soil...

Test Your Knowledge About 3D Printing in Space

Take this quiz to find out how much you know about the rise of 3D printing in space and its future outlook.

Heat-Proof Carbides May Revolutionize Aerospace Technology

The new materials are hard enough to stir molten steel and can withstand temperatures above 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit — about the same temperatures found just a few hundred miles above the surface of the sun.

Bringing Touch to Virtual Reality

The system aims to add the sense of touch to the metaverse for use in virtual-reality shopping and gaming, and potentially facilitate the work of astronauts and other professions that require the use of thick gloves.

World's Smallest Photon Achieved in Dielectric Nanocavity

Until recently, it was widely believed among physicists that it was impossible to compress light below the so-called diffraction limit, except when using metal nanoparticles, which...

UV-to-Red-Light Converting Films Accelerate Plant Growth

An interdisciplinary team from Hokkaido University’s Engineering and Agriculture departments and the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD) has developed...

Miniaturized Infrared Detectors

Extreme miniaturization of infrared (IR) detectors is critical for their integration into next-generation consumer electronics, wearables and ultra-small satellites. Thus far, however, IR detectors have...

New Products: November 2022 Photonics & Imaging Insider

See the new products, including a green laser, a ToF camera, an AI-capable microprocessors, and more.

The Evolution of COVID-19 Testing

One silver lining that the pandemic brought is an expansion of infectious-disease-testing technology.

Producing Oil from Duckweed

Scientists say that such oil-rich duckweed could easily be harvested to produce biofuels or other bioproducts.

How Well Do You Know Nanotechnology?

How well do you know nanotechnology? Find out with this quiz?

iCLIP Speeds Up 3D Printing

“This new technology will help to fully realize the potential of 3D printing. It will allow us to print much faster, helping to usher in a new era of digital manufacturing, as well as to enable the fabrication of complex, multi-material objects in a single step.”

Playing Nice: How Self-Driving Cars and Human-Driven Cars Could Share the Road

Akin to when Model Ts traveled alongside horses and buggies, autonomous vehicles (AVs) and human-driven vehicles (HVs) will someday share the road. How to best...

How Flying Insects and Drones Can Discern Up from Down

Scientists have developed a theory that can explain how flying insects determine the gravity direction without using accelerometers. It also forms a substantial step in the creation of...

Researchers Take Stock of the Most Promising Control Scheme for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors

Electrical machines consume nearly half of all the electrical power generated worldwide, making them one of the top contributors to carbon...

Computer-Guided Drawing Machine Fabricates Paper Metamaterials

Scientists have developed a new technique for fabricating metamaterials from sheets of paper, using a computer to guide the movement of conductive ink pens and mechanical...

Fighting Gravity with the World’s First Propulsion Suit

Using jet fuel as a means to power five gas turbines, the suit can propel pilots about 40 mph for up to eight minutes and can generate more than 1,000 horsepower.

How is AI Transforming Manufacturing?

Artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is gradually increasing across industries. How much do you know about AI in manufacturing? Take this quiz to find out.

Gallium Nitride Yields More Energy-Efficient Devices

Engineers have created new high-power electronic devices that are more energy efficient than their predecessors.

Designing to Minimize Environmental Impact

According to the NASA Earth Observatory, air temperatures on Earth have been rising since the Industrial Revolution. Here is a suggestion about one way that engineers could help reduce the problems caused by that in their everyday work.

Robots Walk Autonomously Via Microscopic Brains

Engineers have installed tiny electronic “brains” on solar-powered robots so that the machines can walk autonomously, sans external control.

Test Your Knowledge About Wearable Technology

See how much you know about wearable technology and the progress it has made.

Test Your Knowledge About Batteries

Do you know how far the battery has advanced since its inception? Find out with our quiz below.

New Ultrathin Capacitor Could Enable Energy-Efficient Microchips

The silicon-based computer chips that power our modern devices require vast amounts of energy to operate. Despite ever-improving computing efficiency, information technology...